20 Ingredients You May Not Have Heard Of Or Known What To Do With: Until Now! The Kitchn's Best of 2012

Masa Harina

Part of the joy of cooking is coming across a new ingredient and then learning exactly what you can do with it. If you've ever wondered about malted milk powder, prickly pears, quark cheese, or salad burnet, wonder no more. We have ingredient spotlights on all these below, plus many more. It's time to get a little adventurous. Goose eggs? Argan oil? Svaneti salt? Bring it on!

TOP ROW
1 Masa Harina
2 Goose Eggs
3 Cassava, Manioc & Yuca
4 Argan Oil
5 Ground Okra

SECOND ROW
6 Sorghum
7 Berbere
8 Peanut Flour
9 Dried Beancurd Sticks
10 Bee Pollen

THIRD ROW
11 Sucanat
12 Prickly Pears
13 Barhi Dates
14 Quark Cheese
15 Black Apricots

BOTTOM ROW
16 Sour Green Plums
17 Malted Milk Powder
18 Salad Burnet
19 Umeboshi Plum Vinegar
20 Svaneti Salt

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Welcome to The Kitchn's Best of 2012 roundup!
From December 17 through January 1 we are rounding up some of our favorite (and your favorite) posts from the past year.

(Images: See linked posts for full image credits)

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Sweet on the Inside: Prickly Pears Ingredient Spotlight

On the train into San Francisco last week, I noticed some cactus growing along the fences with brilliant purple fruits perched on the end of each thorny arm. It wasn't until I saw baskets of this same fruit at the market over the weekend that I realized what I'd seen: prickly pears! Have you ever made anything with this fruit?

Also called cactus pear or tuna, prickly pears are roughly fist-sized, oblong fruits that can range in color from the deepest purple-magenta to light green. I've heard that the deeper the color, the sweeter the fruit. The flavor is hard to describe. It reminds me a bit of quince: frutti-tutti sweet and lightly floral.

The inner fruit can be eaten on its own, but is fantastic made into jelly or infused into sugar syrup for sodas and cocktails. The whole fruit can also be juiced, and the juice used in cocktails, frozen paletas, whisked into vinaigrettes, or just sipped all on its own.

The prickly pears you buy in stores usually have had all their thorns removed, but you still need to peel away the tough outer skin before eating. If you have the opportunity to forage prickly pears, be sure to wear thick gloves when picking and handling the fruits. To remove the thorns, soak the prickly pears in cold water or flame the outside with a lighter or over the gas flames on your stove.

Do you have any favorite things to make with prickly pears?

Related: Recipe: Grilled Cactus and Corn Salad

(Image: Brian Lasenby/Shutterstock)

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